obligations of care and support and a sense of common identity. This taken-for-granted conception of what the family is clearly reflects traditional beliefs as to the way in which sexual and parental relationships ought to be ordered."
             Social science definitions have also been affected by these traditional beliefs, with the functionalist school of thought most closely allied to this way of thinking. The influential work of Parsons (1956, quoted in Abercrombie and Warde, 1994, p.270) describes the family as changing to serve the needs of society. Functionalist views have been challenged by other perspectives, most notably Marxist and feminist critics, who explore society's definition of the family by analysing the power relationships, mainly from an economic point of view for Marxist critics and a male/female perspective for feminist theorists.
             It has been generally accepted that a 'one size fits all' definition of the family is not helpful as it would need to cover so many different configurations as to render itself virtually irrelevant. Some of the different ways in which families have been defined are:
             · 'Nuclear family': a unit consisting of two generations of blood relations, parents and children
             · 'Extended family: a group of people related by descent, marriage or adoption, broader than the nuclear family.
             · 'Conjugal family': used to refer to "a family system in which the nuclear family unit is more or less independent of kin and in which the main emphasis is on the marital relationship" (Goode, 1963, quoted in Anderson, 1980, p.400).
             · Specific labels including 'adoptive families', 'one-parent families', 'Reconstituted families', 'cohabiting units', 'lesbian families' and so on.
             Characteristic Features of Family Structure Before World War II
             Before World War II...